Chapter Nine

“I can’t do this anymore,” Maddie told Kathy after three days of being hounded constantly. “I can’t. I want to hurry up and sell the house and just… move away. Far, far away, maybe. I never even wanted this place to begin with. Besides, it’s way too big for just me. I want to get rid of it and move somewhere where I don’t have to deal with this… this…”

“Bullshit?”

“Yeah,” Maddie agreed. “That’s the word I was looking for. It’s ridiculous. I didn’t ask for any of this, and I don’t want it. I’m done. The phone rings constantly now, Kathy. It never stops.”

“Hey, I just thought of something,” Kathy said. “A realtor friend of mine has some cabins he rents out down around Lake Travis. If you want, I could give him a call. Maybe you can use one for a couple weeks until everything dies down. Take some time to decompress before you make any big decisions like leaving town for good, all right?”

Maddie contemplated only briefly before responding, “Deal. Make the call please, Kathy. I think that arrangement just might save what’s left of my sanity.”

Kathy called her back within twenty minutes.

“He says it’s all yours, as long as you need it. And, he offered the one that’s the most secluded but still close to the water. It’s got its own little dock, and the next closest cabin is a good hundred yards away. You’d have privacy, for sure. I’ve stayed in that one before. It’s really nice, Mad. I think it’s perfect for what you need.”

“Kathy,” Maddie sighed, “you’re a lifesaver. Now all I have to do is hope no news people follow me out there.”

***

The following morning, Maddie put her suitcase in the trunk, started the car, and opened the garage door.

Same stuff, different day, she sighed to herself as the usual sharks circled just beyond where her property boundary ran.

“Keep up if you can,” she muttered through clenched teeth, and pulled out of her garage, pausing only to make sure the door closed firmly behind her. Then she rolled down her driveway, turned right, and sighed again as three news crews opted to follow.

But Maddie’s spirits were high. In addition to her brilliant skills as a realtor, Kathy’s natural ability to outthink most people in any given situation was a huge weapon in Maddie’s arsenal.

“Here’s what you do,” Kathy had told her, before laying out a foolproof plan to evade the media.

“I love it,” Maddie had grinned.

Per Kathy’s suggestion, Maddie drove to Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. The media hounds tailed her, as both women thought they might, so for her pursuers’ benefit Maddie did her utmost to make them think she was catching a flight.

She parked at the terminal, retrieved her suitcase, and walked inside. Her followers peeled off, and she giggled to herself as she surreptitiously watched them drive on.

She waited twenty minutes then returned to her car, left the airport, and headed south on I-35 toward Lake Travis and a long overdue break from her life.

***

“I’m sorry. There’s nothing else we can do,” the cybercrime specialists Mason had brought in told him. “The guy that did this burned all his bridges really well. There’s no getting it back.”

Toby had managed to not only steal from Mason’s company but had also managed to hack and corrupt its Cloud storage – something that Mason could tell both frustrated and fascinated the tech geeks sitting across the desk from him.

Even more damning, Mason’s copies he’d been keeping at home were, as he suspected, not recent enough to contain the last-minute breakthroughs they’d had to solve the last few glitches.

Allen knocked, then opened the door before Mason could respond.

“Hate to interrupt you guys, but you’re going to want to see this, Mason,” he said, his face red with fury.

Allen strode over to the large display monitor on the wall and turned it on, then fired up the keyboard and mouse, navigated to the industry’s premier magazine’s webpage, and clicked on a header to open the article.

Mason’s heart sank to his knees. There it was, in black and white.

Toby Mitting had stolen all their data, all right – and judging by who he was posing with in the picture, he’d shopped it to their biggest competitor.

“We’ll send our final report over,” the leader of the independent IT team said. “I’m so sorry, Mason.”

Once their visitors had filed out, Allen shut the door.

“What do you want to do next?” he asked Mason.

“I’m honestly not sure,” came the weary answer. “All of our spare capital was tied up in this, Allen, you know that. We leveraged everything against this one project. I’m not even sure how we’re going to keep the doors open, much less try to go after anybody in court.”

“You need a break, Mason.”

“I can’t. I have to try to figure something out, man. I can’t just run off somewhere.”

“Mason,” Allen intoned. “You’ve been beating your head against this rock since Toby skipped out on the meeting. You’re wearing yourself out. Take a couple days, use my cabin. Unplug. Step away from this and take a break. It just might help you reset so you can figure this out.”

“Nothing left to lose, right?” Mason said wistfully.

“Exactly,” Allen said as he pulled out his key ring, took a worn silver key off the chain, and handed it over.

“Okay,” Mason conceded on an exhale. “Okay.”

“And if you drink all the whiskey in the cabin, just replace it before you leave, that’s all I ask.”

Mason grinned for the first time in over a week.

***

By mid-afternoon Maddie was carrying in the small bag of groceries she’d stopped and bought on her way down to the cabin. She put away the perishables, then looked around appreciatively at the small but cozy space.

A modest-sized television with DVD player and a three-tier bookshelf full of movies was strategically placed along the far wall to make any seat on the couch ideal for watching films. Another three-tier bookcase on the other side of the TV setup was crammed with paperback books.

The kitchen and little two-seater table were at the other end of the rectangular layout, and down a tiny hallway she found a double bed with a dresser to her left, and a bathroom complete with a claw-foot tub through the opposite door to her right.

This is perfect, she thought. Just what I needed. Especially since there’s zero cell phone reception in here. No one will bother me at all.

She pulled her hair up into a ponytail, tucked the cabin key in the back pocket of her faded jeans, and walked the thirty feet to where the private dock began its run out onto the water.

When she reached the end of the dock Maddie sat down on the faded wood. Too bad it’s early March, she thought. Water’s probably too cold to dip my toes in. Ah, well. Still a gorgeous view.

Her dock was situated on a small inlet, where the lakeshore tucked around itself a bit before continuing westward into the open water. A line of trees to her right concealed the gravel road she’d turned onto from the two-lane road.

To her left she could just see the dock of the next cabin over that Kathy had mentioned, and she noticed someone fishing at the end of it.

While the person was too far away for any features to be readily seen, Maddie could tell by his movements that he felt quite at home with a fishing pole in his hand. She watched for twenty minutes as her mystery neighbor executed one perfect one-handed cast after another.

Fishing. Man, I haven’t done that in years, she realized, then also realized how much she missed it.

Eric had no interest in fishing at all.

What else did I give up for him?

Now that it was all over, memories came flooding back with a vengeance in answer to that loaded question.

Overcome, Maddie stood and made her way back into her sanctuary to cry in private.